1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an aquarium detritus removal system which can generate directed and guided water flow across the bottom of an aquarium tank to deliver all detritus in the aquarium tank right to the water intake tube of a lift pump for removal.
2. Description of Prior Art
In a closed aquarium system, almost all the possible problems that can occur come down to one cause—decomposing organic matter in the aquarium. So, quickly removing all detritus from an aquarium is crucial for keeping the aquarium in good shape. Unfortunately, traditional filters which use either a water intake tube or an overflow box to intake water for filtration have a serious drawback, that is they can only remove a portion of detritus suspended in the water and unable to remove detritus that build up in the gravel bed or on the bottom. Traditionally, a siphon tube is used to vacuum detritus from the bottom of an aquarium, a time consuming and grueling chores for most aquarium hobbyists. Several filter systems which provide means to avoid such inconvenience have been disclosed in the prior art.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,197,911, issued Jan. 19, 1993 to Hong-Jien Chow and Yi-Min Jian, discloses a filter system that use water from another tank to flush the water and waste material from the bottom portion to a water intake inlet. This is accomplished by forcing water into one end of the bottom portion through a feed tube and drawing the water out of the opposite end.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,759,223, issued Sep. 18, 1973 to Robert D'Andrea, discloses a filter system that allows water and waste material collected in the bottom portion to be drained for removal, a drain spigot disposed through the side of the tank adjacent the bottom allows this to be done with little effort.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,722,685, issued Mar. 27, 1973 to Henry E. Orensten and Vivian C. Orensten, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,785,342, issued Jan. 15, 1974 to George H. Rogers, disclose filter systems which use pumps and filter arrangement to draw water and waste material from the bottom portion of the tank for filtration before returning it to the tank.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,533,928 issued Mar. 18, 2003 to Kuniaki Terato disclose aquarium cleaning system which use flows in the bottom of a tank to blow waste material in the bottom to the intake inlet of a lift pump for removal. In actual situation, because of the water resistance, these flows can not go very far, and because these flows moving at different angles, these flow will interfere with each other to create vortex on the bottom of the tank, thus not able to deliver all detritus to the lift pump for removal, especially for a large tank, so that the effectiveness of these invention is very limited.